Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Wednesday 03/07 Quickie:One Bubble Team Already Out of NCAAs

Today's Madness: One Bubble team is crying this morning. With WrightState's upset win over Butler last night in the Horizon final, a previously available at-large bid is taken by Butler, an at-large lock.

Who loses: Will it be a big-league school, like a 7th or 8th bid from the Big East or ACC? Or will the Committee see it as "like-for-like" and yank away a bid from an at-large from a smaller league, like the Colonial (ODU or Drexel)?

Big East ramps up today with early rounds, which this year are more meaningful than ever. Will the Big East get 8 bids? Really?

Oral Roberts wins Mid-Con: Who remembers my (quasi-)famous prediction last March that ORU would become the first 16-seed to beat a 1-seed? Let's bring it back! (And while we're bringing back crazy Tournament picks, how about signing up for the Daily Quickie Readers group of ESPN.com's Tournament Challenge?)

North Texas: First NCAA bid since '88! (Does North Texas have its own version of Danny Manning and the Miracles? Um, no.)

MLB Steroid Scandal: Add two names (of players not playing anymore) – David Bell and... John Rocker. (Of COURSE: Rocker!) It loses some impact that they aren't current players.

NFL: Joey Porter to the Dolphins: If they bring back Ricky Williams, they'd have the makings of an epic reality-TV series: "Joey and Ricky."

MLB: Remember when I was able to argue that Marlins SP Josh Johnson wasn't just NL Rookie of the Year, but a legit Cy Young Top 3 finisher? Those were the days... Now, he's out for another two months with a bad arm. Obvious Hint: Don't draft him for your fantasy league.

Carmelo about to be a baby-daddy of a baby boy (that sounds familiar!): Celebrates with 21 points in a Nuggets win over NOOCH. (Ahem: Seen Varsity Dad yet?.)

On a very serious note: Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream (from Ben & Jerry's) is the best ice cream flavor I have ever tasted.

Have you signed up for the "Daily Quickie Readers" group of ESPN.com's Tournament Challenge? What are you waiting for? Last year's group was the largest single office pool in the country. Let's do it again!

And just because you all have already read all of my blog posts, I wouldn't want to waste your time by reading from old blog posts. Instead, I will read an original piece! (How enticing!) Click here for an interview I did with the series hosts at Gelf Magazine.

I have to say Dan is a little hypocritical today. He will talk about fantasy baseball and the value of players but when he is invited to join a league with his loyal readers he declines. What is up with that?

I know one team that is unhappy with Butler losing and that is UMASS there only hope of making the tourney was to at least make it to the a-10 finals and hope none of this mid majors and small had an upset that screwed up the field but know all they can do is win the A-10 or go to the NIT.

Big D - Dice-K(and we really need a different nickname cause that one sucks) maybe moving up even higher then that. I guess that way I am glad my drafts are late in spring training so you can see the starters when they go 6 or 7 innings instead of 3.

Isn't the Americone Dream just the equivalent of a chocolate chip ice cream cone mixed up in a pint container?

Ben & Jerry's really has to get off the fudge shapes. Maybe all the good flavors have already been invented, but they've been lacking lately in terms of really good new flavors. The black and tan wasn't too bad.

Anyways, Dan, I expect some sort of TV to get updates on the games tonight?

This Orlando steroid thing has finally put me over to the other side--I don't care anymore who gets caught with steroids. I think we're well on our way to showing that pretty much everyone does it, and at this point I think it would be a little disingenuous to even label these people cheaters any more.

Also, I think we need to go back and look at all the writers who declared the steroid era over 2 years ago, and say to them: ha!

Troy I agree and disagree with you. I could care less about players who are no longer in the game using steriods. What I want is for them to catch the people that are still in game cheating and get rid of them. 2 former not that good players being caught for streiods who really cares.

Big D: Non-fantasy here, but my cousin evaluates and deals with talent for an MLB team (specifically pitchers) and got to watch Matsuzaka. He has never been more sure about someone's ability in the bigs than him. Had his team had the budget, they would have been in the bidding. Take that for what it's worth.

@ cmfost, in theory I would be fine with finding who's using and banning them, but I'm starting to suspect that so many people are using that if we kicked them all out David Eckstein would be the only one left.

But more importantly, I don't think there's any way to find any more than a tiny tiny minority of current users. So should we boot, say Gary Matthews, while for all we know Albert Pujols and Ryan Howard are riding the steroid train all the way to the bank?

I don't know. I like the current penalties, but I'm developing a resistance to branding the people who get caught with a scarlet S. Just because Barry Bonds, Raffy Palmiero, and Jason Giambi were caught, doesn't mean they were any more or less guilty than half the league. So I don't think we can pass righteous judgment down on them while affording others a potential free pass.

Troy if you do not pass judgement on the ones who are found guilty then you can never rid the sport of the cheaters that are in it. I think what would really make these players think twice would be if the suspension for steriod use where without pay. Could you see a player taking a risk to be caught knowing that if he is he is risking a large part of his salary.

@cmfost--Good point, and you're right. Tough penalties are probably the only way there's even a hope of stopping this thing. But I'm just not sure we should pass judgment in terms of holding someone out as a pariah. I'm just getting sick of seeing talking heads screaming about how this guy or that guy is a horrible awful person, and ruining the game, when that person, as one of the few that have actually been caught, is no more guilty than maybe hundreds of other athletes. I just don't like seeing everyone take their moral outrage out on the unlucky few while others get away with it and get held up as ambassadors for the game, or great role models.

Syracuse if very bubbly at this point. If they lose to UConn today in the BE tournament, I would have no major gripe if they were left out of the NCAAs. If they win, then I feel they are definitely over the edge.

Last year they were even in a worse position and won the whole tournament only to lose in the 1st rnd NCAAs with a hobbled Gerry McNamara. However, I will always remember the insane run last year to win the Big East with Gerry McNamara hitting shots at the buzzer to tie or take the lead in 3 of teh 4 games.

Let ANYONE who wants to use steroids or HGH, or whatnot, do it. Don't bother to test.

But, include in the player contracts that they will have no monetary recourse if something goes wrong with their bodies down the line, or even on the field during a game. Use at your own risk. Anyone not willing to comply with those terms may go find employment in a different field of work.

(And this doesn't have to apply to baseball, either....I halfway expected the XFL to endorse steroids.)

Chitown, never heard the B & J's story. Was the cop killer freed or convicted? I know Ben and Jerry are active in left leaning politics and I can't remember the last time I bought B&J's but we did go to their store almost every night some years back on a family vacation in Lake George.

I am trying to stay away from the ice cream this month in any event to lose the winter padding I put on. :(

I had heard of the case where the police officer in Philly was murdered by a member of the black panthers. I didn't realize that B&J's had contributed to the defense fund. However Ben and Jerry don't own the company anymore. It was sold a few years ago to a company called Unilever so there is not much point in boycotting the ice cream anymore.

Friends, Dukies, Durhamites-listen up. I come not to bury Gerald Henderson, but to praise him.

Well, duh.

Actually, since most of the national media and Duke haters everywhere spent two days kicking dirt on the poor kid while he was down, I might have to break out my shovel to dig him out.

Said ESPN.com's Pat Forde: "It gets no worse than being bad and being dirty."

Said the guy on the Tar Heel Radio Network as it was happening: "[Hansbrough] got punched with a balled up fist in the face."

First of all, let's get the facts straight. One, Henderson was not looking at Hansbrough as he hit him with his forearm. Not his fist and not his elbow, his forearm. Henderson's hand wasn't even balled up-it was open like he was trying to block a shot. Two, Blue Devil walk-on Steve Johnson had knocked the ball out of Hansbrough's hands, forcing Henderson to react while he was in the air.

A lot of people have said that Hansbrough-who suffered a broken nose on the play and will probably wear a mask during the ACC Tournament-probably should not have been in the game. Coach K himself even hinted at it (rather cryptically: "That's unfortunate that those people were in the game in that play").

With 15 seconds left in a game that had already been decided, the Tar Heel star probably shouldn't have been in. What if he rolled an ankle or tweaked his back or tore an ACL? (Or broke his nose?) But that's kind of beside the point.

What is relevant is that Hansbrough had no reason to attempt the shot he attempted. I'll give him a pass for grabbing the rebound, because if hadn't bounced off of Johnson's hands, it never would have come to the Tar Heel big man. But with a 12-point lead and 15 seconds to play, what was Hansbrough thinking when he went to shoot?

Tyler, buddy. Kick it out to the perimeter. Punt it into the upper deck. Pass it to Dewey Burke and let him dribble the game out. It's Senior Night. He deserves it.

Do anything. Just don't try to run up the score right over four frustrated Dukies in front of the basket.

A team or player with any amount of pride or self-respect isn't just going to let a hated rival run up the score. If Henderson had stood back and allowed Hansbrough to score, that truly would have been wrong. He had to foul Hansbrough to prevent him from scoring, and to send the message: "You may have beat me today, but I will not lay down and let you embarrass me."

From that perspective, the only thing Henderson did wrong was hit Hansbrough in the nose and make him bleed like something out of a Quentin Tarantino movie.

Seriously, has anyone ever bled like that? He looked like he had a blood water fountain welded onto his face. I'm not totally sure he didn't have one of the blood capsules that professional wrestlers use.

And if Hansbrough hadn't gotten up off the floor looking like he dipped his face in a trough of ketchup, there's no way Henderson would've been ejected. In this case, the referees reacted to what Hansbrough looked like when he got up off the floor. Ever hear of "no blood, no foul?" In this case it was "lots of blood, flagrant foul."

Quite honestly, that doesn't make sense. Henderson was suspended for what referees Les Jones, Karl Hess and Jamie Luckie called "a combative and confrontational action -- a fight." I don't know about you, but no fight I've ever seen involved one guy attempting to put an orange ball through an orange cylinder and the other guy accidentally hitting him in the nose with his forearm.

Henderson got the exact same suspension-one game in the ACC Tournament-that Wake Forest guard Chris Paul got two years ago for deliberately punching N.C. State's Julius Hodge below the belt. That was deliberate. That was a fight.

This was nothing more than a hard foul that happened to catch a guy who looks like he must have a blood-clotting problem in the right (or wrong) spot. Nothing more than that. So lay off Henderson and lay off Duke's team.

I think the case you're talking about is the Mumia Abu Jamal case, which anyone who has read up on the case, knows that the entire trial/process/alleged confession is sketchy at best.

Anyway, obviously I'm not condoning violence against anyone, but having a good and competent defense attorney is critical, especially in murder cases. I mean, it does neither the victim nor society justice if the wrong person goes to prison on a life sentence, right?

that duke kid is an idiot - i agree henderson wasn't trying to break his nose but that kid didn't make any relevant arguments beside that he hit him with his forearm not his elbow. Who cares the game situation, if you grab a board under the hoop your going to go up with it. And screw the "why's he in the game in the first place" bullcrap - roy can play whoever he wants whenever he wants to try and ensure a victory down to the final second.

A $20 home ice-cream machine can make you all the cinnamon ice cream you want. Really, it's just light cream, sugar, some vanilla, and cinnamon. (Splenda if you wanna make it low-carb). Get the kind with the inner shell of refreezable gel, and you won't need ice and rock salt -- you prefreeze the machine and take it out to use it. Takes about half an hour.

The worst kind I ever made was butter rum. Real rum, yes....but also real butter, that hardened up into chunks when it froze.

I'm not sure Dan ever stepped into the prep room at PTI/Around the Horn but I can tell you that I was in there every day when I was an intern for those guys (yes, I was a PTI/ATH intern) and Tony and Mike really do figt like that off camera.

That's what makes PTI so good. While Tony and Mike are best friends, they are also the perfect guys to argue at eachother till they get blue in the face.

If you were wondering, I did meet Dan while I was working there and was even sitting at the desk behind the camera for one of Dan's few ATH appearences.

I'd like to point out that the time that I was there and Dan was on, he was doing the show from the mini studio 1 floor up from the real set and they just put a purple background behind him. This is the same studio they use when you here Cold Pizza say "Now we have (Athlete) live from DC...". I'm pretty sure that it was Dan's first time and we called him because it was an emergency because we couldn't hear somebody, I think it was Cowlishaw in Dallas, and we needed a forth guy.

I actually think Dan did well that time. I remember that I was on the prep team that talked to Tony and Mike before the show. We got their pretty early and a staple of my day was the Quickie.

(By the way, the best "Now (Athlete) live from DC" I ever witnessed, and got to meet the guy too, was Dwight Howard because he was in DC for the Jordan Capital Classic in his senior year of HS. He was pretty cool.)

Ben and Jerry's Dan?? Come on. As a man from the Ice Cream Capital of the World, if you haven't had Blue Bunny Ice cream, you haven't had the best. That is not biased either. I'm really not a big fan of ice cream in general. But Blue Bunny is much, much better than anything else. It may not be on the East Coast though...

Nah, Blue Bunny isn't a story brand. But it is hard to come by outside the Midwest I've heard. I'm in Minneapolis, only 4 hours from the factory, and I have to go to a specific grocery story company to buy. Kinda sucks, but it's worth it. Super Chunky Cookie Dough is amazing!

I'm glad I didn't base much off Dan's ATH performances.I thought he came off smarmy and mariotti-like (in that he tried to hard to be loud). Plus, maybe it was the makeup, but he looked like was rocking a fake tan and too much hairgel.I decided to forget Dan's ATH performances and only view him in the Quickie context. lol

Clearly the Wright State "upset" is going to knock a school out from the ACC or Big East. I'd say the Big 10, but the Big 10 is as safe as Dan's wife's cooch. I mean that place is all about warm gooey safeness. The Big East though, that is like Brian's wife smelly cooch. It's got too many teams in it and you just get lost in the confusions. Is 'Cuse better than WVU? Well who won when they played, what they didn't play? That's the problem. There is no way to differentiate. It just gets hard, like cmfost gets when he reads this comment.

No team in a major sport (MLB, NBA, NFL) or hockey (I don't remember the initials) has ever won 51 games over a stretch of 56 games spanning different seasons, playoffs, or anything else including in the same season.

cmfost -- we were pretty sure we were in the tournament once we beat Conneticuit and went above .500 in the big east. but yes, i would say it pretty solid now. if we beat Georgetown tomorrow, its a lock. (i totally just jinxed it....)

51-5 is a huge deal, regardless of the 0-4 start. What's not a big deal is that it's the regular season, and it means nothing if they don't win in the NBA Finals. The West will be a serious dogfight in the playoffs.

Regardless of the 0-4 start, the 51-5 never being matched in any sport ever is very impressive.

But don't get me wrong, they could choke.

And I still think the Suns are better. But they will definitly choke.

By the way I saw the Wiz back in full form (read the troublesome trio all looked healthy) last night and they shattered the Raptors. Just made them look silly. If they wanted to, they could've won that one by 40.

The 76-77 Montreal Canadiens scored 387 goals and allowed a paltry 171. Goal differential is +216!! That is a devastating team. Two strong scoring lines, the best defensive line in hockey, the Big Three on defense and Dryden in his prime in net. They were undefeated in the pre-season and lost only twice in the playoffs. So in 106 games that season this team lost only 10 games! That was the 2nd of 4 straight championships.

By the way, just for the fun of it...Top 10 New Shows From This Year:1. Heroes - no comment needed2. Friday Night Lights - if you haven't seen it, you are lacking as a person3. The Class - there is a serious lack of quality sitcoms that this show can't fill by itself4. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip - Matthew Perry is still aewsome as is Sorkin5. Jericho - much better than I thought it would be6. 30 Rock - see comment for #57. My Boys - it's about sports therefore I watch, then it was good therefore I continue to watch8. The Game - see comment for #89. Eureka - so it ended awhile ago, doesn't change the fact that it was good10. Kyle XY - I just wanna know who that guy is

Best night of television is probably Monday night or Wednesday night. It's a tough call for me. I love How I Met Your Mother and the Class. Then of course, there's 24. Heroe's really isn't that good. The Black Donnellys just started last week and that is a VERY good program. CSI: Miami is ok, but it's CSI so I like it. Wednesdays are nice with Friday Night Lights and Jericho plus CSI: NY. Personally, I like Jericho. It's my favorite new show with FNL a close second and the Black Donnellys a close third.

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.